


Event Horizon

by domesticadventures



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Demon Dean Winchester, Gen, Headspace
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-03
Updated: 2014-10-03
Packaged: 2018-02-19 17:07:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2396159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/domesticadventures/pseuds/domesticadventures
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In layman's terms: the point of no return.</p><p>There are 4,109,421 miles of road in the United States. You wonder, if you traveled them all, would you finally find the pieces of yourself you lost along the way?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Event Horizon

**Author's Note:**

> Companion pieces: [Sam](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2670389) | [Cas](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4286976)
> 
> Please also check out [the incredible art](http://domesticadventures.tumblr.com/tagged/event%20horizon) [Cecilia](http://femmechester.tumblr.com) made for this fic!!

The Mark on your arm is a physical representation of every mistake you’ve ever made; every wrong turn, every broken promise, every lie by omission.

_This is the end_ , you think. _This is the end of the road for me_. You’re struck with a sense of deja vu so powerful it takes your breath away.

You saw the end, once, and it wasn’t pretty. You faced yourself down and spat _Something’s broken in you_ , and some part of yourself, some piece frozen in time that never got past being four years old, stood in the playground of your mind, hands on his hips, lilting _Takes one to know one_. You are thirty-five years old and you have no counter-argument to offer.

You have nothing to offer.

\--

The third iteration of your eleventh grade English teacher told you there’s an easy way to categorize Shakespearean plays: If it ends with a wedding, it’s a comedy. If it ends with a funeral, it’s a tragedy.

You had a funeral, once. Two of the people you love most in the world buried you in an anonymous grave marked only by a cross, crude and unfinished just like the rest of you. They refused to burn your body, like you would have wanted.

Some days, you kind of wish it had ended there.

Instead, here you are. You don’t know what it takes to get a happy ending, but you know you haven’t earned yours yet. Might not ever, not even with the eternity you’ve been given to try.

Shakespeare never wrote plays like this, though. Never wrote anything that never ended, that simply went on and on, the suffering of its characters sustained in perpetuity.

In other words, Shakespeare never wrote horror stories.

Having lived one, you really can’t blame him.

\--

There are 4,109,421 miles of road in the United States. You wonder, if you traveled them all, would you finally find the pieces of yourself you lost along the way?

Somehow, you doubt it.

It’s a meaningless analogy anyway, you’re beginning to realize. The idea that your life is any kind of choose-your-own-path adventure is an illusion, nothing more than a comforting distraction. The reality is that you’re on a railroad, your life stretching out before you in a single line, intersecting with the roads other people are on in a mess of mechanized barriers and flashing lights, danger, danger.

There are no sharp turns for you, no crossroads, just the occasional slow curve onto a connecting line, but someone else is always in charge of throwing the switches. You resent this unknown entity right up until the moment you realize that even if you managed to work your way off the tracks, you wouldn’t know where to go.

There are 228,218 miles of train tracks in the United States, haphazard and disconnected. You wonder, if you traveled them all--

No. Why bother?

\--

_It could be worse_ , you think, but you’re having a hard time figuring out how. The problem with silver linings is they’re based on the false presumption you can still feel the sun on your face.

You are a series of absences, a compromise no one is willing to make, a person existing entirely in the negative. You believe in yourself only to the extent you can see the shadow you cast when faced with the light of the people around you. You could fill a room with the things you are not: Not strong, not righteous, not worth saving, not

good

enough.

So be it. If you can’t cast your own light, you can at least spread your own darkness.

 


End file.
